


Silent Like the Grave

by Arukou



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Author is not a doctor, F/M, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-surgery aftermath, Suggestive Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 07:45:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2101377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arukou/pseuds/Arukou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first night in the hospital, Tony sleeps like a baby. By the third night, he can barely sleep at all. The surgery was supposed to make everything better, but somehow he feels like he's falling apart.</p><p>Iron Man III, filling in the scenes</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silent Like the Grave

He’s seen the x-rays. 3D printed sternum and partial ribs made to carefully slide in where his own skeleton is missing, partially reconstructed pectorals and obliques, a new pacemaker (Tony’s own design) to aid his weakened heart, and skin grafts to cover the giant hole. He’s as close to Frankenstein’s monster as any soldier who’s met an IED. Really, he’s lucky. He didn’t lose any limbs, didn’t lose his balls. He should be happy that modern science has advanced so far that they can basically rebuild a chest.

For the first few days, he’s on the heaviest painkillers he’s ever taken (and that’s saying something) and he sleeps about 20 hours a day (also saying something.) The best sleep he’s had in years, since before the cave. But when they start weaning him off, he starts staying up later and later. And it’s not that he doesn’t want to sleep. He’s bone tired, eyes so dry they feel like sandpaper against his eyelids. Many nights, it’s too much to even hold up his head. But there’s always something missing. He runs his fingers over the mass of bandages, and he’s figured it out by the third sleepless night.

The sound of the arc reactor is gone. It was never loud. That would have been dumb and inelegant on Tony’s part, and Tony’s designs are never, _ever_ inelegant. (Ok, maybe Dum-E was disgustingly complex and bug-riddled, but in Tony’s defense, he’d been seventeen, drunk, and maybe a little high when he’d designed and implemented that bucket of bolts.) But anything on the power scale of the arc reactor makes some sort of noise, no matter how perfectly designed. There are too many charged atoms, too many flying particles and oscillating waves for there not to be.

Tony was always semi-aware of it. There was a low growl he could feel through his jaw, a gentle, steady humming that made his inner ear tickle a little. When he’d pressed his hand to his chest, he could feel the faint thrumming vibration, steady as a colony of bees, eternally present, but below the threshold of human hearing. Pepper had mentioned once that she could feel it when she curled up against him, but she’d never noticed it before then. He’d seen dogs turn their heads though, following the strange unfamiliar sound with interest.

But now that low thrum in his molars is gone. The hospital room isn’t silent. Not by any means. He can hear nurses shuffling in the hall, and if he concentrates he can hear the IV dripping. The air conditioner needs a tune-up. It’s wheezing a little as it sputters through its cycles. The rustle of sheets, the beating of his own heart, steadily dragged along by the pacemaker, the whistle of air through his teeth and nose. But there’s no arc reactor telling him, “You’re alive. You’re still going.”

The fourth night, he finally nods off in exhaustion only to wake two hours later, reaching into the darkness. “Obie, no!” His phantoms disappear and he presses his hand to his chest, hisses in pain as the bruising and scarring and everything groan in protest. A nurse comes rushing in.

“Mr. Stark? Your heart rate’s elevated. I need you to tell me if you’re having chest pains.”

He looks at her, not quite comprehending for a moment, before slowly falling back into the bed. “No. No, it was just… a bad dream.”

She considers him a moment before offering a gentle smile. “I have family in New York. I know you’ve gone through a lot for our country. We’re all really grateful for that.”

Tony nods a little, unsure of what to say. He glances to the side. Reporters and SHIELD and government officials are all easy to handle. It’s the people who come to him and thank him, like he didn’t spend years profiting off murder, like he’s some sort of hero, that make him hesitate and second-guess.

She, however, apparently doesn’t need an answer. “Do you want me to get something to help you sleep?”

He almost says yes, but then, that would be cheating. “No. It’s alright.”

The nurse looks a little worried, but she lets it go. “Good night, Mr. Stark.”

“Goodnight.”

And then he’s alone again with the silence.

* * *

 

On the fifth day, they change the dressings and Tony spends a long time staring at the ceiling, keeps his gaze away from the surgical sight. He told himself over and over he was ready for this, but somehow, stupidly, seeing his chest laid bare will make everything _real_. He’s not the same man anymore, but a part of him is desperately sure that this whole thing was a mistake. And another part of him wants to protect that screaming denial and clutch it tight. What is he without the suit? (Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist.) Asshole with a genius IQ? Look what that did for him before, with his weapons programs in the Middle East. He can’t, won’t go back to that, but he feels like he can’t go forward either.

The doctor finishes changing the dressings and gives Tony a pat on the arm. He bites back a sharp comment and just nods in thanks. White gauze swathes his chest and his mind quells for the time being.

The hospital lets him out after eight days of recovery, and it’s the first time in years that Tony has actually heeded the doctors and not checked out AMA. He wants to do this right. He wants Pepper to know he’s really trying. But he still can’t sleep and the silence of their rented villa is killing him.

“I want to move to New York permanently,” he tells her one morning, and he knows she’s looking at the dark bags under his eyes and the gaunt lines of his face, worrying because he never comes to bed and she finds him passed out in an armchair night after night, if he manages to sleep at all. He plunges on before she can offer an opinion. “I think it would be good for us. All of our clean energy facilities are out east and ever since we shut down weapons manufacturing this plant’s been pretty useless anyway.”

“We should change that,” Pepper says, but she’s also nodding. “I do agree though. The investors and board mostly live out east and I have to fly there anyway for most of the major decision making. And I miss the art scene.”

Tony reaches across the table and squeezes her hand. “It’ll be good,” he says, and hopes to God he’s right.

For days after that conversation, it seems Tony almost manages to forget about the bandages mummifying his chest. They’ve plastered a layer of thin plastic over the surgical sight to protect it from water penetration, so even showering is only a small, biting reminder of what’s missing. He goes in every four or five days to get the dressings changed, and every time, he stares at the ceiling with all his might, never quite daring to look down at the ruin of his chest.

Now if Pepper would just touch him… But she’s terrified of hurting the surgical site (three separate surgeries in rapid succession, no strenuous physical activity for a month, Mr. Stark, is that understood?), and he supposes he can’t blame her. They go through their days subsisting on brushing hands and lips, occasional and very awkward hugs with only one arm.

But sleeping doesn’t get any easier, especially when he can’t wrap himself around her. And then, finally it’s time to take off the bandages for good. Tony reports to the hospital like a responsible adult and his surgeon greets him with a smile.

“Let’s get some fresh x-rays to get an idea of the progress and then we’ll get your dressings taken care of.”

The processes are tedious (Jarvis could’ve taken x-rays from…but no. The workshop is at the bottom of the Pacific and Jarvis’ backup is on the other side of the country.) but the end result is promising. Tony and his doctor stare up at the stark (hah!) black and gray stretches of plastic and metal that now hold him together.

“It looks like you put Humpty Dumpty together again, Doc,” Tony quips, but he really is impressed. A year ago, he’d thought the technology to rebuild him was still five years out, but here it is, staring him in the face. (Maybe we should be looking into biomedical engineering, we could start working on the nano-scale, I could bone up on everything that’s going inside me, and maybe we can make Extremis less…explodey, oh, doctor’s talking…)

“Well, Mr. Stark, only time will tell how well it holds up, but this silicon compound your company developed to act as false cartilage in the prosthetic bones, it’s testing extremely well. You may even return to 85% lung capacity.”

As if to test it, Tony takes a deep breath, and even though it hurts, his chest expands, contracts, _moves_ in a way it hasn’t since the cave.

“Now then. Let’s get those dressings off.”

A nurse cuts away the bandages and the plastic sheeting covering the stitches around the graft. A crust of scabs comes away with everything, but Tony’s organs don’t immediately fall out, so he’ll assume he’s healed. There won’t be another white bandage to hide the truth from him, though. Just a compression wrap to help the skin graft acclimate. His chest is bare and the nurse is watching him watch the ceiling, and if he looks down...

The doctor looks over his chest with a critical eye. “The surgical site is healing well. The skin grafts look good. Very healthy, getting blood flow. Your x-rays show that internal swelling is negligible. I think, Mr. Stark, that you’re in the clear. I’m going to put a light dressing over this, but you can remove it in four or five days. You’ll have to wear a compression wrap for a while, which I know isn’t much fun for you, but it’s important. If your skin graft fails, the recovery just gets longer and longer and that’s no fun for anyone.”

Only when the doctor has turned his back and started talking to the nurse does Tony dare look down, really look down, for the first time in over a month. The scarring had been bad before, but now it’s a veritable ruin across his chest. The huge skin graft over the old port doesn’t match, raw and pink like a new-born baby, still studded by the lattice work of the structure that gave it support. The surgical scar extends above where the port was, making a T just below his collar bones. His chest muscles are uneven, a strange line running where the pectoral grafts sit, the skin on top covered with old shrapnel scars. Another line runs along the bottom of his rib cage on the left, where one rib had to be 75% reconstructed because of extensive damage in the battle with Killian. There is no blue. There is no heat. There is no light.

The doctor turns back and Tony puts on his press face. “Definitely Frankenstein’s monster. I’m not going to have the urge to start killing villagers, am I?”

“I certainly hope not Mr. Stark.” He presses gauze over the skin graft, carefully covering the whole circumference, and then tapes down the edges with a precise touch. “We have a little present for you from the surgery.”

The nurse proffers a tiny bottle, and inside something clinks gently against the glass. “Your shrapnel, sir” she says and even though it should sound cheesy, she’s startlingly sincere.

Tony takes the bottle wonderingly, staring at the tiny little scraps of metal, so much a definition of his life for the past five years. In them, he can see Yinsen’s dedication, Obie’s cold rage, Nick Fury’s perfect disdain, Pepper’s horror, but also her quiet, implacable support. He shakes the bottle and listens to the shards clink and clatter.

The doctor gives him a grin and then removes his gloves. “I’m off to my next patient. Carla will give you further instructions on continued care of the surgical site. And remember, much as I know you’re fond of life-threatening situations, please avoid strenuous physical activity for at least another three weeks. Once we’re sure the graft is going to hold, we’ll start you on a physical therapy regimen to help rebuild your chest and core strength.”

* * *

 

Pepper’s waiting for him when he gets home. She took the week off, just to support him because of this day. (She always knows. How does she always know?) With her usual composure, she looks him up and down and raises an eyebrow in question.

“All healed. Skin graft is looking good. Fit as a fiddle.”

But there it is, in the way she purses her lips and transfers her weight to one hip. Tony can feel his jaw creak, teeth clenched together with nerves. But no. There’s not going to be any cheating. Especially with Extremis now null in her blood. He’s the only one in danger of falling apart, and he has to show her this is going to be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.

He meets her eyes and reaches up to remove his tie. Pepper steps forward, hands darting out as though to touch, but she stops herself, fingers fluttering like butterflies. But now Tony’s undoing the buttons on his shirt, gingerly shrugging out of it. Next comes the compression wrap, which he drops to the floor. And now there’s nothing hiding him from her. She can see everything.

The skin graft is covered, of course, but the other scars splinter away from it, old and new, splitting his torso into a mosaic. He watches as her hands go to her lips, covering a gasp, and somehow he thought she wouldn’t cry. This, of all things, shouldn’t make her cry. But then she’s reaching out, tracing the line down his left rib cage, and there are tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Oh God. Oh, Tony…I didn’t…I should have…” And he puts his arms around her and holds her tight, even as his chest pulls in protest, scars stretching in unfamiliar ways.

She’s sobbing, and Tony can feel tears welling up in his eyes, too, even though in theory this was supposed to be a happy thing. A good thing. Because whatever he might have gained from this surgery, he’s definitely lost something too, and he feels like only the test of time will show him what that something was.

Pepper was never much of one for hysterics. Even when Obie was threatening to shoot Tony at point blank range, she never cried, just acted (after pointing out the very obvious “But you’ll die!”). She allows herself five minutes and then she’s pulling away from him, putting her hands on his shoulders.

“We’ll…get through this, right Tony?” she says, but the catch in her throat is still sharp, and he can see it in her eyes. Guilt, and worse, _pity_. And that’s the last thing Tony wants. So he nods, gives her his press smile, and then pulls back. She picks up the compression wrap for him and starts diligently binding his chest, smoothing fingers over muscle and scar tissue.

But Tony knows the instant he crawls into bed that he still won’t be sleeping tonight. The quiet encroaches, makes his teeth grind and ache. Pepper comes to bed late, and he feels a horrible sting of rejection when she settles on her side facing away from him. He knows she saw his eyes, wide and dry and staring. Her breathing is steady, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s asleep, and the night wraps around them both, horrible and muffling as the void of space. He closes his eyes and longs for Jarvis, for his workshop, for a lot of things he’s pretty sure are gone for good now.

For an hour he lays there, fingers trailing back and forth above the wrap, pressing into the scars along his collarbones. And then he gets up. He’d promised her…but… At the heart of it all, Tony’s still a mechanic and when he’s not making things, building things, improving things, he’s not happy. He settles down at the table in their breakfast nook and pulls out a tablet and a laptop, calling up his satellite connection to New York just so he can have Jarvis with him again. The designs flow like water and Tony loses himself in the work.

But it’s not as easy. In the back of his mind, Pepper is a constant, disapproving presence, watching as servos and hydraulics and circuits spin away from his fingers. There’s something he can do about this. It’s just like any other problem. There’s always a solution and Tony’s just not seeing it yet. He feels like he’s lost something in the name of his relationship with Pepper. Pepper feels like she’s made him do something unnecessary and horrible. Together, they’re both just walking balls of relationship guilt. And maybe they’re both right, but it’s not like Tony’s going to open up his chest and jam the reactor back in. The only way is forward. He’s going to find a way to move them forward (even as a jet boot forms under his fingers.)

At 2 AM, brain spinning and spinning around conduits and cooling systems and repulsors, Tony has an epiphany, the kind that comes after too many sleepless nights and coffee infusions. It’s California. It’s being here, so close to the sight of destruction, that’s making the both of them crazy, holding them both in the _then_ and not in the _now_. Pep’s still got four days off and Tony’s schedule is still wide open thanks to his recovery orders. He files a flight plan for Singapore in the private jet, and then swipes his designs off to the side. In their place, he brings up a CAD program and sketches out his idea, fingers dancing across the screen. He won’t be able to fabricate it himself, not with the shop gone, but the work is so delicate, he’s not sure he’d be able to manage it anyway. No. He’ll need a professional for this.

It’s 6:30 AM when Pepper sits down across from him, her hair disheveled, her expression worried.

“Did you sleep at all?”

“Sleep is for the weak.”

“Tony…”

“Pack your bags.”

“For what, New York? There’s not much to pack, Tony, even with what we rescued from…”

“Nope. We’re going to Singapore.”

She gapes at him like a fish before standing abruptly. “I need coffee. And you need coffee. I need to make sure you know what you’re saying.”

He watches nervously as she fusses with the espresso machine. She’s getting the strong stuff so she must be serious about coherence. When she sets a steaming cup in front of him, he downs the whole thing in one gulp and then looks back at her.

“We’re going to Singapore. Flight’s scheduled for ten.”

“Why are we going to Singapore?”

“To get away. You know. See the world. Actually enjoy this vacation instead of just sitting here and being awkward at each other for twelve hours a day.”

“What’s wrong? Did the doctor give you bad news?”

“No! No, not at all. I said I was fit as a fiddle. Why would you even think that?”

“The last time you tried to spring surprise travel on me, you were dying of palladium poisoning.”

“I…oh, right. Well not this time. This time I really am healthy and I just want to spend some time with the woman I love. Is that so bad?”

She raises her eyebrow at him, as though she can’t quite believe what she’s hearing. “Are you trying to be romantic and succeeding? Are you sure they didn’t fiddle with your brain while you were under the knife?”

“I can throw in a giant custom teddy bear, if you’d like. Prove it’s really me.”

Pepper smiles then with her whole mouth, and Tony feels his heart shudder and then restart. It’s amazing how one simple gesture can make all these sleepless nights and doctor-filled days worth it.

“Alright,” she says, downing the last of her espresso. “I’ll shower and pack and then we can be on our way.”

And that’s exactly what she does. They’re at the airport at 9 AM and Tony thinks his pilot might actually hyperventilate from shock at their punctuality. Somewhere over the Pacific, exhaustion gets the better of him and he nods off against Pepper’s shoulder, but not before he sends off the designs and specifications to a private jeweler with a promise to drop off the raw materials later. He’s ordered an express job, to be finished in two days’ time, but it’s not like he can’t afford it.

Pepper jars him awake as they touch down, his ears slightly muffled because they haven’t popped at all.

“Did I sleep the whole flight?”

“Pretty much.”

“And it’s what…afternoon?

“Two o’clock. I didn’t eat lunch. Are you hungry?”

And shockingly, Tony is starving.

They spend the rest of the day doing touristy things, and even if it’s not really Tony’s cup of tea, Pepper is clearly enjoying herself. They check in at the Ritz, and she immediately tugs him down the halls to inspect their huge art installations, a concierge tailing them and catering to their every whim. The name “Stark” occasionally has its uses. With each smile Pepper flashes him, he feels more and more like this is the right choice, getting away from it all. While her face is turned up to look at the sculpture, Tony quiet presses a box into the concierge's hands and asks that it be delivered as soon as possible. The package disappears with a simple nod and then the smiling woman leads them forward into the art wings. They follow up their tour of the hotel (What kind of hotel has an art gallery anyway?) with a walk through the botanic gardens and dinner on the waterfront.

But even so, even with Chinese in his ears and fiery spices on his tongue and exhaustion in his bones, when Tony and Pepper bed down for the night, Tony doesn’t feel the siren song of sleep. He stares at the ceiling of their suite, and feels the muffling weight of silence settle around him.

This time though, Pepper turns over, and he can feel her eyes on him, on his face, on his shoulders and arms.

“Talk to me.”

Tony chews the inside of his cheek, but damn it, he promised he’d try. “It’s the quiet. It’s too quiet,” he whispers into the dark, and saying it somehow makes it more real. His chest suddenly feels void and hollow, like instead of flesh and plastic and muscle and skin, there’s just a horrible empty hole.

Pepper reaches across the space between them and cautiously runs her fingers over his arm, tracing veins and muscle and scars.

“It did hum, didn’t it?” she murmurs and her hand passes up his shoulder to his collar bones, fingers moth-wing soft on the scars.

“It’s like…even when I sleep, I keep dreaming of Obie and when he…and space. It shut down on the other side. Too much pressure or lack of pressure or maybe I just used it up, but…it was off. Everything was quiet.”

Her fingers are traveling down now following the lines to the heart of the web, pressing ever so gently through the compression wrap.

“How can I help?” And he can hear the guilt and worry in her voice. “I didn’t…this wasn’t supposed to make it worse for you. You were already having the nightmares, but…”

Tony takes a deep breath and turns slightly. In the dark room, with the curtains drawn, he can barely see her. There is no eternal glow now. His own personal nightlight is gone for good. But somehow, the dark makes it a little bit easier to be honest and to expose himself even more than he has already.

“Just…be there for me. Stop pulling away. The scars are healed, Pep. It’s just physical therapy now. And I can’t do this without you. I’m not asking for sex, although I do kind of miss the sex. But I would at least like to cuddle for a while. You can handle my cooties for a few hours, right?”

“I was thinking the rest of our lives,” she murmurs and she’s shifting closer now, wrapping one arm over his waist and pressing her other hand to his cheek.

Tony might be mostly an idiot when it comes to Pepper, but even he can recognize that it’s time to close the space between them and kiss her. So he does and as her hand runs up and down his side, over his still tender ribs, he feels the tension drain from his shoulders. This is not impossible. They will get through this.

Pep kisses him slowly, teasingly, and for once, he doesn’t really feel like pushing for more. In the dark of the suite, he just lets her take her time, lips and tongue and hands and God, he missed this. Missed her. Eventually, she pulls back, eases off, and they’re just trading soft kisses, barely more than brushes of silk, and somewhere in the midst of that, surrounded by her warmth, Tony drifts off to sleep.

* * *

He sleeps in the next morning, and wakes at 9:32 to find Pep already at the dining table with breakfast and espresso and her StarkPhone. “Morning, sleepyhead,” she says, and there’s a twist to her smirk that he hasn’t seen since…since a long time ago. It goes straight to his groin and he has to bite back a dirty retort. 

“Morning, beautiful.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.” 

He sits at the table and tucks in to breakfast, his appetite surprisingly ravenous.

“I’ve got the day planned out for us.”

And he’s reminded why she made such an excellent assistant, an even better CEO. Tony did the impulsive things, the impromptu trips, the explosions in the basement. Pepper took that impulsiveness and shaped it, gave it trajectory. Of course she would come up with an itinerary for their surprise getaway. “You work fast,” he murmurs and leans across to kiss her, morning breath and all. She doesn’t seem to mind.

Once he’s fed, showered, and dressed, she sweeps him out the door and through the city. There’s museums and shopping for her (his black Amex sees more use in that single afternoon than it’s seen in the past six months) and then a tour at Flextronics for him. He loses himself in the schematics as they show him some (stupidly complicated and clunky but still fascinating) plans for a photon-based computer and before he knows it, he’s been talking with their developers for over two hours, but when he looks up at Pep, she’s smiling indulgently over her tablet. He knows they probably only let him look at the experimental stuff because they’re hoping for a contract (and he might even give it to them), but he hadn’t been thinking about working with photons before. His brain is on fire with the possibilities.

They dine in their suite with ridiculously indulgent room service, and this time Tony does push a little further when they fall into bed for the night. He’s still cautious with his chest, and so is Pepper, but he’s also incredibly creative with his hands and mouth, and when they’re done, he’s still pretty sure he’s got it.

Their last full day there, Tony decides they need to be ridiculous so he can make the surprise later even better. He hauls Pepper to the zoo and demands that they act like teenagers again, which they more or less do. They go incognito, though plenty of tourists still recognize him and demand photos and autographs, but for the most part they can blend in. It helps that a steady rain is falling all morning, driving off the crowds. Tony manages to drag Pep through the splash zone (We’re already wet anyway, what could it hurt?) completely ignoring the “Ages ten and under” sign and then they eat ice cream and kiss under the rain forest canopy. He doesn’t even mind when a parrot perches on his shoulder and proceeds to soil his shirt. (“Just call me Jafar,” he tells Pepper, and she smirks and says, “Guess I ought to send you back to your lamp, then.” “Those sequels were awful,” is his retort.)

And then it’s their evening. He brings her back to the hotel and tells her to put on the nicest thing she brought and she gives him a suspicious glance. He brought a white tux for the occasion and the staff has it pressed and hanging in the closet for him. As promised, the package is in his pocket, right on time.

By the time they step out into the night air, the rain has cleared off and Singapore’s shining skyline glitters over the waterfront. Tony has reservations for them at Sky on 57, where they share a positively decadent meal. Caviar, dumplings, scallops, lobster. Pepper demands chocolate for dessert and Tony grins at her over champagne. It’s not the most amazing food he’s ever had, but it might be one of the best meals, here above the city with Pepper’s smile.

They walk out on the balcony afterward and Tony pulls the necklace from his pocket.

“A little something from me,” he says, and presses it into her into her fingers.

She gives him a _look_ and then lifts her hand so she can study the metal. Sharp shrapnel strung on a delicate chain, a ridiculously large ruby in the center, shaped like a heart. Her fingers trace over the metal, studying it with pointed focus before glancing up at him. “Is this…?”

“Remember how you gave me my heart a few years back?” he says, lifting her free hand to kiss her knuckles. “You can have it back. You can keep it.”

Pepper snorts a little. “Could you possibly be any more cheesy?”

“I could order fondue for us. That could probably max out the cheese factor.”

She snorts again and turns around. “Put it on for me?” she says as she raises her hair out of the way. Tony strings the chain around her neck and does up the latch in back before wrapping his arms around her. She turns in the circle of his embrace and he presses a kiss to her forehead before pulling her close.

“We’re going to be fine, Tony,” she whispers, and this time, he actually kind of believes her.

He sleeps well that night, but he’s pretty sure it’s because Pepper’s let him use her chest as a pillow. The sound of her heartbeat, constant and steady, is almost as good as the arc reactor.

* * *

They fly out of Singapore the next morning. Tony filed a direct route for New York and Pepper didn’t even bat an eyelash. The repairs on the tower have been done for ages and it’s ready for habitation. There’s no need to drag out the move anymore, and Tony can do physical therapy just as easily in New York as he can in LA.

When they touch down thirteen hours later, Happy is waiting for them at the airport, and Tony frowns. “I thought I told you to take two months off, not fly across the country.”

“You’re not my boss anymore,” he retorts. “She is.”

“Pepper, did you call our dear Happy out of his rest and relaxation to wait on us hand and foot?”

“I did no such thing. He called himself out, and I decided I was too tired to argue.”

Happy’s still walking with a cane and a serious limp, but thankfully, most of his bones had come out of the bombing intact. He hauls their bags into the back and opens the door for them, giving Tony a lascivious eyebrow wiggle that clearly says he approves of the whole romantic getaway thing.

Once Happy’s in the driver’s seat, he turns a bit and says, “Where to boss?”

As one, Tony and Pepper say “the tower” and then both burst out laughing. And it feels amazing to laugh, too, even if his ribs ache a little with each contraction. When did he last laugh? Really laugh?

In New York traffic, it takes them nearly an hour to get from La Guardia to Manhattan, and they spend the majority of it talking shop. Pep wants to push for more mobile devices, but Tony thinks expanding green energy is a safer bet for long-term investment. He’s pretty sure they’ll end up doing both, but this gentle argument, one that’s not about the suits or the Avengers or any other life-and-death situation, is really nice.

They arrive in the penthouse at five at night and Tony immediately orders real pizza, intent on a night in. Pep has a conference call, even though she’s still technically on vacation, but it feels normal, more like real life. Or as real as their lives ever get, anyway. They eat greasy pizza with root beer and turn in early, but Pepper stops him outside the bedroom door.

“I got a little something for you, too,” she says with a grin.

“Is that ‘little something’ lingerie per chance?"

“Even better,” she says, and opens the bedroom door. As first, he doesn’t see anything out of place. He’s been in this bedroom a few times since they finished the repairs, but nothing seems to have changed. And then, on the bedside table, he sees it. There’s a little white box, with a glowing blue circle in the middle. As he steps closer, he can tell. It’s not the real reactor. It can’t be. He tossed that into the ocean when he went to pick up DUM-E. But it’s a facsimile, and it’s hooked into a box that gently hums as he approaches.

“It’s a white noise machine,” Pepper says, coming up and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “You’d mentioned the quiet was bothering you, and I thought…”

“It’s perfect,” he says and turns to kiss her, fierce and tight, holding her like he’ll never be able to let go again. But she has different ideas and tumbles him into the bed.

That night, he sleeps like he did that first night in the hospital, but he’s not hopped up on drugs or shot through with pain and exhaustion. It’s just Pep and her perfection. That’s all he needs now.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://arukou-arukou.tumblr.com/).


End file.
